ERBIL, Kurdistan Region of Iraq – More than 4,100 people have been killed in sectarian violence across Syria since the overthrow of Bashar al-Assad's regime, a human rights watchdog said on Sunday, urging Damascus to hold those responsible accountable and ensure transparent investigations.

The UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) released a report detailing the toll of sectarian killings and extrajudicial executions it had documented since the fall of the Baath regime in December 2024, revealing that “to date, 4,163 people have been killed, including women and children.”

The watchdog asserted that the rise of Sunni rebels to power has been marked by a “rise in sectarian killings and extrajudicial executions in several provinces,” mainly in minority-dominated areas.

In the months following the regime’s collapse, Syria underwent a series of massacres and “acts of revenge” targeting civilians, particularly against the Alawites in the coastal region under the accusation of being regime loyalists, according to SOHR.

In March 2025, Syrian security forces carried out a violent crackdown on the western coast, following attacks by Assad loyalists, leaving at least 1,400 people dead, most of them Alawite civilians, according to verified figures.

This wave of violence later spread to other parts of the country, most notably in the Druze heartland of Suwayda province and Kurdish-led Rojava (northeast Syria).

Tensions between the Druze and the new government peaked in July, with SOHR documenting over 1,600 deaths in Suwayda as a result of clashes between the Druze and Damascus-backed Bedouin tribesmen, including more than 700 residents of the city, most of them being Druze.

Meanwhile, the Syrian government in January launched a brutal offensive against Rojava in a bid to secure President Ahmed al-Sharaa’s vision of a united, centralized Syria, despite the minorities’ repeated calls for a decentralized system.

The assault has left hundreds dead and forced Kurdish-led forces, who defeated the Islamic State (ISIS) in Syria, to cede swathes of territory and withdraw to Hasaka province, with the attacking Syrian forces violating ceasefires, committing human rights violations, and reported war crimes in their offensive.

The Syrian government has attempted to hold trials and bring the perpetrators of the massacres to account. However, human rights violations and breaches of ceasefire agreements continue across different parts of the country, "with no effective accountability for those responsible for these violations," the report said. 

“Protecting civilians and upholding the rule of law cannot be achieved by changing the regime alone. It requires independent and transparent investigations, holding all those responsible for violations accountable according to the standards of justice, and guaranteeing victims' rights to truth, redress, and reparation,” the observatory said.